Laid to Rest
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: Sequel to Immortal. There comes a time where all things must be laid to rest, when there is no-one left to carry them.


**Author's Notes**

Luce means light in Italian. Interesting ne? Seeing as what happened in Frontier.

In case you don't notice, I've shuffled the spirits around again. Light and darkness together. Wind and water together. Thunder/Ice and Earth/Wood together. The only one I couldn't do is darkness/metal, seeing as water/metal took precedence, and I put fire/light together. Anyone see the patterns?

I got some inspiration from the SVH series.

At my university, only LOTE subjects that come under Arts are examinable. All others, such as English, history etc. are not.

There was a bit of a religious reference in the end. The interim is basically the state between life and death where the soul is separated from the body. Some religions believe that the soul delves partially into this realm in sleep, and death is simply eternal sleep.

Enjoy the last instalment of this trilogy. If you haven't seen the others, the first two were In Memorium... (a oneshot) and Immortal (10 chapters). This is set several years after in real world time. An indefinite amount of time has passed in the digital world.

Enough of my blabbing. Enjoy, and tell me what you think.

* * *

><p><strong>Laid to Rest<strong>

Sequel to Immortal. There comes a time where all things must be laid to rest, when there is no-one left to carry them.

Kouichi K/Koichi

* * *

><p>Most didn't remember the old Digital World; a new one had risen and flourished. Like the old, it had reigned in chaos for a short period of time, before an evolution lead the angel Lucemon of light to dissolve ruin into a golden age of order.<p>

In all honestly, the only ones still with true memories of the old world were those who had formed a deep bond with the human world, and more specifically, its inhabitants. All others, they read the legends from Wisemon's book, once the Bokomon who had journeyed with the ten legendary warriors and chronicled the tale. And most took them as works of fiction; the spirits now slept under the care of the three Generals, the three Perfect once the Celestial Digimon who had taken over rule past the dark age that followed Lucemon.

MagnaAngemon, once Seraphimon, remembered only echoes of these humans who he had said to have once travelled with; photographs that meant nothing if it hadn't been the for the book of his mentor and teacher, Wisemon himself only remembering it seemed due to the labour that had gone into the writing and the love that had formed from their first journey together. The archangel that justified law and order under Lucemon remembered most two faces near identical and one who could not be more different. There was something about those three had had stuck out from the others, perhaps because he now had the spirits of light, darkness and flame under his guardianship.

Angewomon, who had been the Ofanimon who had reached out to the other world, remembered even less, but perhaps because she had barely communicated with the humans themselves save through transmission. What she did remember though was a strive for friendship and love and understanding between the three who had grown up together and now shared the rank and rule. Under her were the spirits of wind, water and metal.

Andiramon, previously Cherubimon, was the one of the three who remembered the most. Perhaps it had to do with his own fall from grace, or the close relationship it had led to him to establish with the wielder of darkness, the one person who seemed to represent the pivotal of his own heart. That boy, he remembered well, and his brother of light, and the four he had moulded from data, but the other four were a little hazy. But he remembered the angel that now ruled. The part that had never been written, and thus forgotten. Beneath him, the remaining four spirits; once at odds with one another and now slumbering together.

And Lucemon himself, all he remembered was a lesson that he had been taught. Not who had taught it, or why, or under what circumstances.

Some lessons had to be remembered, but the details had been buried in the rebirth of a new world.

After all, Andiramon mused, staring around the magnificent library where students came in search for knowledge and left with wisdom in their hearts.

The lesson of forgiveness was one that sometimes to be hard earned.

Even in a world thriving forward, there would be those who would not be willing to pardon.

* * *

><p>Now twenty-one and completely devoured by the real world, four of the six legendary warriors found themselves on separate roads. Junpei, already having reached the prime age of twenty-one a year before them, was undergoing an engineering apprenticeship that saw him all over Japan, while Tomoki finished his first year under a rather interesting and unorthodox professor at Tokyo university.<p>

Izumi studied the culinary arts; inspired by Papa Burgermon, she aimed to open her own restaurant...once she made it through university. Takuya, on a sports scholarship, was now interstate and training for Olympic calibre softball (much to Kouji's surprise, having expected a soccer track instead), while Kouji, to everyone _else_'s surprise (save Kouichi who simply knew his brother too well), was following in his father's footsteps and pursuing a business degree.

The twins had moved out of their father's place at eighteen, renting an apartment together for a few months, until Kouchi had applied and been accepted at Oxford...which had unfortunately sparked a fight between the two brothers due to the distance between them. Luckily though, that had healed over before the elder left for Britain...so they still talked to each other about once a fortnight. Though they hadn't physically seen each other for more than a year as international flight prices were nothing to joke about.

Point was, as tight as their little group had been, keeping together was impossible once the sanctuary of school was left behind. Especially with Junpei married, Izumi engaged and (according to his brother), Kouchi getting rather friendly with classmate abroad. Kouji figured he would pop the question soon; his brother disagreed. For whatever reason, the younger twin really couldn't figure his brother out at times like this...or many other times.

But he figured he could bug his brother about it once he came home, as three years to the day they had graduated from senior high school together, both of the gang not in Tokyo were coming home.

Kouji had to resist the urge to catch his twin in a bear hug as Kouichi finally managed to exhume himself from the crowd in the airport. The main contributors were the crowd and the fact that his brother looked about to fall asleep on his feet.

'You okay?' the younger twin checked worriedly, trying to quell the almost childish excitement. Well, excuse _him_ for being separation anxiety.

''course,' Kouichi yawned, the twins depositing the elder's luggage into the trunk then sliding into the seats, Kouji driving his car while the other rode shotgun. 'Jet-lag.'

'You sure?' The longer-haired and more stoic twin was still sceptical, although well aware that the flight from Britain to Tokyo International Airport was quite lengthy, and jet-lag was any good excuse for a nice nap. But he was sure his brother was tireder and slightly more...stretched, lately (as in, during the last year or so); it was exceedingly difficult to catch him fully awake, though as Kouichi reasonably pointed out, _he_ did have a habit of ringing around five in the morning and waking up his dorm mate.

'Sure,' the elder twin yawned again, bucking his seatbelt before closing his eyes. 'Why wouldn't I be?'

'Oh I don't know,' Kouji replied airily, staring up the black vehicle (he was surprised Kouichi hadn't commented on the colour choice. 'Maybe because I'm always the last to know.'

He wasn't even graced with an answer on that one, seeing as Kouichi had nodded off completely.

'Oo-kay.' The driver raised an eyebrow, concern better masked but still apparent to anyone who knew him. _I thought he wasn't a big fan of cars. Surprising he fell asleep in one._

But he was forced to turn his attention back to the road. And a long time coming reunion.

* * *

><p>'Where are the twins?' Takuya yawned, stretching out on the grassy plain. 'Is Kouichi back yet?'<p>

'Here,' said man's still gentle voice greeted, plopping down beside him as Kouji took an empty spot between Tomoki and Izumi.

'I guess you are.' The brunette rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, before grinning childishly again. 'Geez, we never grow up, do we?'

'I don't know,' Junpei disagreed from across him. 'It's been a long time since we've been together. And I know it's been a long time since I've thought about the legendary warriors or the digital world.'

'Yeah...' the other five voiced their agreements, before Kouji gave his brother an odd look. 'You've got that book,' he pointed out. 'And weren't you taking a course in arts?'

The pictures Kouichi had choreographed during the last year of elementary school and then during junior high had eventually been bound into a chronology of their journey in the other world. It was a memento he had taken with him with a few other personal belongings, so it was rather inconceivable that _he_ hadn't thought to look at them for a time, especially since most of his subjects weren't even examinable, much to the others' envy.

'I was busy,' the raven murmured, flushing slightly.

'Busy?' Izumi raised an eyebrow, before doing a double-take at his tired appearance. 'Jet lag still sticking?'

Kouichi stifled a yawn. 'Unfortunately, yes.'

His twin frowned. 'You slept all of yesterday.'

The other shrugged helplessly. 'I've just been really tired lately.'

He neglected to mention the space-out moments, especially when Takuya suddenly developed a smirk.

'Has this got anything to do with the girlfriend Kouji told us about?'

Kouichi gave his twin an exasperated look before answering with a flat 'no'.

'Nothing to do with girlfriend or no girlfriend?' Junpei asked, confused.

'The first one,' the other sighed, losing the battle of keeping his eyes open.

Kouji frowned again. 'Kouichi?'

It took a long moment for the voice to register. 'Hmm?'

'If you're not sleeping, you're floating in the clouds for the last week. Seriously Ni-san, what's wrong?'

Being as old as they were, Kouji only called his _slightly_ older brother 'Ni-san' when he wasn't about to take 'no' for an answer.

'Nothing's wrong,' Kouichi mumbled truthfully, rubbing his eyes before forcing them open again, only for them to shut at their own accord. 'I've just been getting tireder lately. I don't know why.'

'Lately as in?' the younger twin pushed.

The other shrugged. 'I didn't even notice I was sleeping more than usual till a few weeks into Oxford.' At the looks he received, he added: 'My roommate bugged me about sleeping for thirteen hours in a day. It wasn't like I ever used to count.'

'How'd I miss that?' Kouji muttered to himself, trying to remember his brother's sleeping patterns. 'You'd always nap, but you were an early riser.'

'And you normally weren't home when I napped,' Kouichi pointed out, though sounding as though he wanted to pull out from the conversation. 'And I never looked at the clock.'

'But still,' the blonde said, concerned. 'You're too young to be sleeping that much.'

Her eyeline furrowed when she received no answer. 'Are you listening to me?' she shrilled, loud and sharp enough to wake anybody.

Which Kouichi wasn't too thrilled about, as he irritably answered: 'Like anyone can ignore you when you get like that.'

Tomoki and Junpei looked at each other, before scooting out of the way.

Not that anything happened. Save a general consensus of surprise.

Until something suddenly occurred to their youngest member.

'Hey,' he said suddenly. 'Remember that incident where the digital world was starting to reset itself? When Kouji was acting like a grouch-you were,' he added, looking at the still bandana-wearing adult as he opened his mouth to rebuke the statement.

The five mumbled agreement, though Kouichi's sounded more like a 'vaguely' than a 'definitely.'

'You wouldn't happen to be having weird dreams again...would you?'

'I always have weird dreams,' the elder of the two twins pointed out. 'The Digital World, weird tunnels of darkness, the tumbling down a rabbit hole fiasco, more darkness, new digital world...'

He sounded like he'd lost the plot about halfway through, as it sounded more like a bunch of mumbled words than anything else. Junpei somehow managed to extract the 'digital world' comment from it though.

'Really?' he said eagerly. 'Anything new?'

'Bokomon digivolved, and the angels are serving in their Perfect Forms under Lucemon. Our story is a rather entertaining fiction, and very few digimon remember them to be true.'

'Cool,' Takuya commented. 'We're living legends.'

Kouji however frowned again. 'Does that bother you?'

'Huh?' Kouichi opened his eyes, before smiling and shaking his head. 'Of course not. Why would it?'

'Aren't you the one who holds on to the past?'

He shook his head lightly, before closing his eyes again. 'I'm just the one with a bad memory. The world's moving on. And so are we.'

'What about the spirits?' Izumi asked. 'Where are they?'

'Under the Celestials. But they've been rearranged. Light, fire and darkness are under MagnaAngemon, wind, water and metal under Angewomon and the other four under Andiramon.'

'The Ancient Ten weren't reborn?' Junpei asked in surprise.

'No,' Kouichi sighed. 'Our bonds with them were too strong. But that's about all I recognise. Everything else is so...foreign, though some things are indistinctly familiar.'

Takuya looked up at the blue sky. 'I guess we'll really never go back then. Both worlds are moving on. And when we forget or die, no-one will ever know...'

'Don't talk like that,' Kouji snapped. 'We've got time.' _I hope_...But he didn't voice that out loud.

'But there'll come a time,' Tomoki pointed out. 'When the digital world will no longer be linked to ours. It's already moving away, and as long as evil doesn't run a muck there, new warriors won't be needed. And who's to say there aren't other worlds out there that they could turn to? We won't be able to do anything anymore; we're too far into our own world and our own lives. We're still friends, but we're not as strong and versatile as we were when we were younger. We're not digimon anymore. We're human. Pure human. And I don't think we can ever be digimon again. Think about it, we only remember snippets of our journey? Half of the digimon in Kouichi's scrapbook, I've forgotten the names of.'

'You should have labelled them,' Junpei laughed, a little emptily. 'But he's right. The Digital World is far out of our reach, and it has been for a long time. And the Digital World we knew is already gone.'

Izumi looked at her knees. 'That's such a depressing thought.' A smile drifted onto her face though as silence settled. 'I'll remember for as long as I can.'

The others nodded.

* * *

><p>'Kouichi?' Hey, Kouichi! Wake up!'<p>

Kouichi moaned softly, but didn't awaken, even as his brother shook him.

'Kouichi! C'mon Ni-san.'

Nothing this time.

'Kou-ee-chee!' Kouji drew out the name to an almost piercing level, something he would not have done if anyone else had been around and not even thought to do in any other situation.

The other mumbled something incoherent.

Kouji sighed, torn between worry and irritation. His brother always had been a heavy sister, but not this impossible. Waking him up was more of a chore than it normally was.

Especially since he needed to be at work in half an hour.

Yelling hadn't worked. Neither had removing the blankets or blinds. Or shaking. Or kicking (once and never again). Or putting his music on full blast (rock, which Kouichi absolutely _hated_). Or the conveniently timed alarm (he had forgotten the leftovers reheating on the stove).

He quickly glanced at the time, before trying one last attempt without results.

And then he had to leave; his brother would wake up later as he normally did.

He was a few levels short of panic though when he found the house (they had moved out of the apartment when Kouichi's books and Kouji's own work under a rising company gave the more than enough of a combined budget) exactly as he had left it, sleeping brother and all.

'Kouichi!' he yelled, almost literally jumping on his brother.

This time, he stirred a little more vibrantly.

'Mmmph,' the elder twin mumbled, voice muffled by his brother's body. 'Keep it down, I'm trying to sleep.'

Or that what Kouji assumed he said anyway. It didn't really sound like that.

'Kouichi! You've been asleep since yesterday afternoon!'

A slow blink as the younger twin withdrew. 'Oh,' he said finally.

'That's what you say?' Kouji asked incredulously. 'You scared me half to death.'

Again, it took a precious moment to reply. 'Sorry,' he apologized, almost stumbling out of the bed. 'Still tired.'

'Tired? After sleeping over thirty hours? And you're not going back to bed!'

He yelled that last part as Kouichi slumped back over the said piece of furniture.

'I'm calling a Doctor.'

'Don't bother. Already saw one.'

'Oh?' He hadn't known that, but if anything, that just made him worry more. 'What'd he say?'

'...nothing useful. Except to keep my head off cloud nine.'

Kouji scowled. 'Some doctor.'

'It's not the doctor.'

'What?'

Kouichi mumbled something into the covers, before dragging himself up and sitting against the frame. 'There's nothing wrong, medically speaking.'

'I'd still feel better if you went to a doctor here.' There was a stone sinking into his stomach. 'Maybe they missed something. You're sleeping more and more every day. It's a miracle you made your deadline last week.'

Kouichi nodded, but neither twin was convinced. Especially since the elder twin was basically fighting a losing battle against the black haze in his mind.

'I'll chuck you in the bathtub,' Kouji threatened. 'Ice cold water.'

And when Kouichi didn't reply nor respond, he made good on that threat.

'Kou-jee.' But even the drawn-out growl sounded exhausted, even with the cold wake up call.

Kouji just shook his head. 'I don't want to see you fall asleep and not awaken.'

'Kouji, you know that's going to happen some day,' Kouichi pointed out, shedding his wet clothes and turning on the hot water (since he was in the bathtub, he might as well take advantage of that). 'We're human. We'll die someday.'

Said twin couldn't help but glare sourly. 'I just don't want to be burying you.'

Kouichi cast his eyes away, looking at the swirling water instead. 'You call this ice cold?' he asked, a little more awake than the zombie he had been impersonating moments ago.

Kouji simply glowered. His brother ignored that though, knowing it to be his way of showing fear, instead sighing into the rapidly warming and soothing water, reaching out to flick the hot-water tap off so it didn't overheat.

'Don't fall asleep in the bath,' Kouji warned, and Kouichi blushed slightly, straightening himself against the side.

'Do you mind?'

'Considering you look like you're going to fall asleep in standing water and drown if I'm not there...yes, I do mind.'

The other groaned. 'Fine.' And he reached for the soap, only for it to fall from his numb and sleepy hands.

Kouji reached down and grabbed it, frowning as he felt the coarseness of the not-yet-slick bar. 'It's not slippery.'

Kouichi shrugged slightly from his spot. 'My hands are still asleep.'

The other grabbed them, finding them slightly wider, before he suddenly tipped his brother's head back to look into the blue eyes, still the same turquoise they always were, but now that he compared their reflection in the large mirror across, they were a lot more transparent than his own.

But his eyes had always been darker. Ironic when he had once been the warrior of light.

But one thing about then was different. They were dreaming, drifting, father than he ever seen them drift before. It reflected in his work; the children absorbed in wonderful journeys and important lessons buried underneath, further from reality than even the Digital World but enjoyable all the same.

'At least,' he murmured, softly, hesitantly, afraid...a side he would only ever so to his brother. They weren't twenty one, they might as well have been twelve for all the distance between them. 'People will remember you after you die.'

'As an author at the most.' Kouichi smiled slightly, leaning his head back and closing his eyes again. 'A name...not what's beneath. It's the same with everyone. Stories will pass, parent to child, friend to friend, but people will forget. Things change. History becomes legend. Legend becomes myth. Fact becomes fiction. The past eventually vanishes to make way for the future.'

He paused, before yawning. 'Aargh. I'm still seeing that bed.'

'Eat first.' Kouji smirked suddenly. 'Extra chilli.'

Kouichi groaned at the double torture. 'I won't be able to sleep after _that_.'

'That's the point.'

He was wrong. And Kouji watched with the fearful prospect that that sleep could turn eternal.

Like his brother, he was wrong.

But there was a time where that would come.

When the soul, slowly siphoning into the interim, the realm between life and death...or as some believed, death and rebirth, had its last ties dissolved with the earthly gate.

* * *

><p>"<em>Sleep [...] fulfil[s] all the offices of death, except to kill."<em> ~ John Donne

* * *

><p><em><strong>The End.<strong>_


End file.
